Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/434

 402 fflSTORY OF GREECE. manj perished miserably. For two days Syracuse was thas a prey to the sanguinary, rapacious, and lustful impulses of the soldiery ; four thousand citizens had been already slain, and many more were seized as prisoners. The political purposes of Aga- thokles, as well as the passions of the soldiers, being then sated, he arrested the massacre. He concluded this bloody feat by killing such of his prisoners as were most obnoxious to him, and banishing the rest. The total number of expelled or fugitive Syracusans is stated at 6000 ; who found a hospitable shelter and home at Agrigentum. One act of lenity is mentioned, and ought not to be omitted amidst tliis scene of horror. Deinokrates, one among the prisoners, was liberated by Agathokles from mo- tives of former friendship : he too, probably, went into voluntary exile. 1 After a massacre thus perpetrated in the midst of prolbund peace, and in the full confidence of a solemn act of mutual re- conciliation immediately preceding — surpassing the worst deeds of the elder Dionysius, and indeed (we might almost say) of all other Grecian despots — Agathokles convened what he called an assembly of the people. Such of the citizeos as were either oli- garchical, or wealthy, or in any way unfriendly to him, had been already either slain or expelled ; so that the assembly probably included few besides his own soldiers : Agathokles, addi-essing them in terms of congratulation on the recent glorious exploit, whereby they had purged the city of its oligarchical tyrants — proclaimed that the Syracusan people had now reconquered their full liberty. He affected to be weary of the toils of command, and anxious only for a life of quiet equality as one among the many ; in token of which he threw off his general's cloak and put on a common civil garment. But those whom he addressed, fresh from the recent massacre and plunder, felt that their whole security depended upon the maintenance of his supremacy, and loudly protested that they would not accept his resignation. Agathokles, with pretended reluctance, told them, that if they insisted, he Avould comply, but upon the peremptory condition of enjoying a single-handed authority, without any colleagues or » Diodor. xix. 8, 9 ; Justin, xxii. 2.